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| How does Digital Volunteers work? |
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Digital Volunteers works as both an information clearinghouse for topics and events related to the global digital divide, and as a central hub where volunteers and nonprofits can team together to deliver value to the nonprofits mission of bridging the digital divide.
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 Volunteers can offer their professional services to deserving nonprofits through an auction process, whereby the services of the volunteers are assigned a standard market rate per hour which is applied to the hours of volunteer service that are offered. Qualified nonprofit organizations also access the Digital Volunteers website, seeking volunteers with expertise in areas where the nonprofits need assistance. After searching for the services it needs, a given nonprofit can then review the historical Digital Volunteers service reputation of a given volunteer (assuming the volunteer has been a member of the Digital Volunteers community in the past) and decide whether the volunteers professional services are worth bidding for. Then, through a traditional Dutch auction process, with a limited time frame, over the web, the interested nonprofits can bid for the volunteers services. Once the auction is concluded, Digital Volunteers, Inc. then charges a transaction fee of 6.5% of the estimated market value of those volunteer services. The market value is determined by a general estimate of what the financial value of those professional services would be, had they been utilized in the open market economy, outside of the Digital Volunteers community. The Digital Volunteers transaction fee is allocated toward the internal financing of the organization, in helping to expand Digital Volunteers global footprint. |
| In the future, the long-term vision for Digital Volunteers is to be not only a clearinghouse for information, calendar of events, and hub for volunteerism, but also a news service, with regional journalists and editorial desks focused on the status of the digital divide in various regions throughout the world. |
| In the near-term, the Digitalvolunteers.org website serves as a central hub on the web where socially conscious people with professional services expertise, whether their expertise be in web development, public relations, or accounting, can offer their services to nonprofits willing to pay a nominal fee for the benefit of services that they may not otherwise be able to utilize. Further, the volunteers can work on their own schedules because they post their volunteerism offerings based upon schedules that are convenient for them. Thus, the volunteer service is driven by the volunteers desire to help the nonprofits. |
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